A Mother's Love
by Wheezambu
Summary: Written for an LJ contest, theme was Wishes. Got third place! Yay me!


**A/N: Um...I'm leaving the warnings on this one because I don't want anyone to be freaked by accident. This is probably one of the most disturbing things I've ever written. What can I say...I squick myself sometimes.**

**Title:** A Mother's Love  
**Rating:** R  
**Pairing:** Inuyasha/Izayoi (go ahead and huck rocks at me, I deserve it)  
**Words:** 1180  
**Genre:** Angst Ahoy!  
**Warnings:** See pairing. Implied incest, minor, perhaps noncon, but not graphic  
**Summary:** Izayoi wishes her son was someone else, Inuyasha wishes the same.

Sometimes he just wished that she'd go away. Most of the time he loved his mother very much, but sometimes he didn't feel that way at all. She was the only one who would touch him or comfort him. Everyone else turned away from him, whispering about her half-breed brat. He knew the loneliness that ate at her. It ate at him as well and he hated seeing that pained misery in her soft eyes. Once she had been a beloved daughter, a sweet tempered lady with many suitors. Now, because of him, people spat on the ground where she walked and a called her a demon's whore.

"My beautiful son," she'd whisper as she combed out his long white hair. Inuyasha could hear the sadness in her voice as she stroked his face, her fingers lovingly would linger on his ears. She still missed his father, the man he'd never known. She said he looked like him, said that he reminded her of his father in so many ways. Maybe that was the reason why, the reason that she came to him sometimes in the night. She would try to drown her sorrow in sake and then she'd turn to him for comfort.

He was only a boy and she was his whole world. Other children wouldn't play with him, frightened of his strange eyes and claw-tipped fingers. Even if they weren't afraid of him, they still wouldn't let him play with them. He was always the outsider, the unwanted hanyou shame of his family. He felt their rejection like a spike in his heart, as burning brand upon his skin. _Outcast. Dirty. Unclean._

Children listened to what their parents said about him, even those conversations that were spoken in the dark and not meant for young ears to overhear. Sometimes he wished he didn't hear them either. Sometimes he wished he'd never been born. Then perhaps his mother could be happy.

She came to him in the night, sliding in next to his not-sleeping form. Then Inuyasha would lie very still and pretend to be asleep. He wished that he could be asleep, not hear her soft breathing, not hear her soft breathing nor feel her gentle hands upon his body. His mother would hold him close while she whispered his father's name.

It was wrong for her continue to do this. He knew that and burned within his heart like a blister, like a sore, like an unhealed and festering wound. When he'd been younger, he hadn't understood it at all. Had not known that the way she loved him was different by day from by night. He had thought...that surely all parents did this, that she was no different from any other mother. If there was a difference, it was all within him. He wished it was so, he wished that she didn't need to...

He wished that it hurt. Then he could hate her.

"Please," she'd say as she held him. "Be him for me." She'd place his small hands upon her breasts and sigh to him, over and over, how much she loved him. And he loved her, he did so love his mother and he would never disobey. How could he, when she'd sacrificed everything just to give him life? He was unworthy of that gift, but he wished only to make her happy. He bent his head as he was asked, kissed her as she bade him. Inuyasha wished that he had the courage to tell her no, to tell her she was _wrong_. He wished he could tell that he was not his father.

And he wished he couldn't hear what others said, the murmurs, the sly whispers. The disgusted sneers. She was damaged, so they said, defile and perverted by a demon's touch. She was not fit to have a human husband, even if some man could be persuaded to take a wife so tainted and spoiled. The revulsion in their voices was hard for him to endure. He could stand their hatred of him, he deserved it. But even as he wished it was not so, he knew that they hated her still more.

"You do it with your mother," a boy had taunted him one day. Inuyasha flushed and ran away, so ashamed he could barely breathe as he hid in the garden. It was all his fault, his fault for being born, his father's death, the reason for his mother's desperation. It horrified him that he was too weak to protest, to turn away the sake drenched kisses she placed upon his mouth.

He wished he was stronger, but he wasn't. He was only a boy. He was weak and he was wrong and somehow his mother's sickness was all his doing. He wished he didn't look like him, he wished that his hair was dark. He wished that his eyes were a different color, his face a different shape. He wished he wasn't all that she had. He wished that he could run away, but how could he leave her, abandon her to be all alone?

"Yes, mother," he'd say as she slipped his clothing from his skin. It was always yes, no matter what she asked of him, no matter how he wished it otherwise. Her touch was always gentle, loving, and her smiles secretive in the morning. We share so much, she'd whisper as her fingers tangled in his hair. We are so close as mother and son. Still he knew that she hid her tears from him, as he hid his from her.

Inuyasha wished that he was older, that they could steal away and live someplace where they were not mother and son. Maybe then it would be easier for him to bear. She didn't speak to him of wishes nor did she promise him that this time would be the last. He might not have believed her anyway, but he wished for her to say it once, just for him to hear.

"Do not call me mother," she would breathe, her body warm on top of his. In the darkness he couldn't see her face and didn't answer. He knew she wished he was someone else and Inuyasha learned to wish for that as well. In the night she was someone else, in the darkness and need she called a name that was not his although only he could hear her shiver and sigh.

When she died, pale and sickly with fever, he wished that he could grieve for her, mourn her as a son should mourn his mother. Instead he felt only emptiness and a sad, gnawing relief. The day they buried her was the day he left and Inuyasha never looked back. When the wind blew his hair around his face, when he ran as fast as his legs and heart would allow, he wished that he could feel guilt for rejoicing in this freedom, this life without her. In the end, only one wish had ever been granted him.

And now he was free.


End file.
